Guest Meditations:
There is a downside to all the talk in Psalm 23 and John 10 about being God’s sheep. I am wary of these texts. Christians have been instilled with a sheepish docility that has played into the hands of the powers for centuries. Obedience has been made the highest Christian virtue. As a result, Christians have colluded in their own injury. They have accepted without resistance totalitarian rulers. They have been submissive in the face of tyrannous hierarchies in church and state, corporations and schools. Women have submitted to battering, economic exploitation, and wage inequality. Men have been led off to war like sheep, flocking to their doom without resistance.
There is nothing sheepish, however, in the reading from Acts. Peter and John have been arrested by the authorities for healing a man and preaching the resurrection of the Jesus these authorities had killed. A night in the poky does nothing to dampen their spirits. Normally ‘idiots’ (idiotai, common) are cowed by the panoply of power and the bearing of the powerful. But not these goats. They use the occasion of their arraignment as a platform for preaching. ‘When they saw the boldness of Peter and John and realized that they were uneducated and idiotai, they were amazed. (Acts 4:13)
Jesus takes sheep and makes them goats. He takes those who have internalized the system of ranking and stratification as divinely ordained and frees them from these delusions. He awakens common, ordinary people who have never before sensed their power and sends them into the very maw of the system to denounce it.
Walter Wink
Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, works still to subvert our isolation, worthlessness, and despair, our pride and complacency, all of which grow out of the power of death. In so doing, he opens for us a space to know the victory of the resurrection; space to be led in the green pastures, beside the still waters, and to dwell in the blessedness of the Lord’s House.
Jerome Neyrey
Introduction:
The image of the Good Shepherd shows us how the risen Christ brings us to life. It is the relationship between the shepherd and the sheep, one of mutual knowledge and love, that gives the shepherd authority. The shepherd’s willingness to lay down his life for the sheep shows his love. First John illustrates what it means to lay down our lives for one another by the example of sharing our wealth with any sister or brother in need.
Anselm, Bishop of Canterbury, died 1109
This eleventh and twelfth century Benedictine monk stands out as one of the greatest theologians between Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas. He is probably best known for his “satisfaction” theory of atonement. He argued that human rebellion against God demands a payment, but because humanity is fallen it cannot make that payment. But God takes on human nature in Jesus to make the perfect payment for sin.
Acts 4:5-12
Peter and John have been arrested the previous day because they were proclaiming the news of the resurrection to the people. In today’s reading, Peter is filled with the Holy Spirit so that he is able to proclaim salvation in Jesus’ name to the religious authorities.
John 10:10b-18
In language that recalls the twenty-third Psalm, Jesus describes Himself as the shepherd Who cares for His sheep. He is willing to die for them, and is able to overcome death for them.
John 10:10b-18
In language that recalls the twenty-third Psalm, Jesus describes Himself as the shepherd Who cares for His sheep. He is willing to die for them, and is able to overcome death for them.